So we set up a call with Randall this morning to discuss some of the profoundly stupid things his guy Ralph de la Vega said recently about creating incentives that would encourage people to stop using AT&T’s data network so much. Point of the talk was, when you’re lucky enough to create a smash hit product — when the stars align, and the hardware is great and the ecosystem is great and the apps are great and the whole experience is great, and everything you do just makes everything else better, and you’re totally on a roll and can do no wrong — when that happens, you do not go out and try to fuck it all up by discouraging people who love your product. What you do, instead, is you fix your fucking shitty ass network you fucking shit-eating-grin-wearing hillbilly ass clown!

First off, before we even start the call, we’ve got problems, because shithead won’t get on the phone unless I’m on the line first. Like, Ja’Red comes in and says we’re ready to go, and I go, You mean Randall is on the line, and Ja’Red says, No, his assistant is on the line and once you get on then they’re going to get Randall — so I reach down, hit the button then hit it again so the call gets terminated. I tell Ja’Red to explain to these motherfuckers that Steve Jobs does not get on the line first, ever. Ja’Red does this, but Randall’s assistant insists Randall always gets on last, and especially so in this case since AT&T is about three times the size of Apple, so this time I pick up the phone and tell the assistant that he should inform Randall that when he’s ready to get his pointy head out of his ass and call me, I’ll be here waiting for his call.

So fine. We wait a bit, and he calls. He doesn’t say anything about the standoff, but I can tell he’s pissed, which is fine by me. He launches into a mumbling spiel about how Ralph de la Vega didn’t really say what all the papers are saying he said, and he was misquoted, and it was taken out of context, but I’m like, Bitch, please, guys at our level don’t get taken out of context, we write the shit out in advance and we know exactly what we’re saying when we say it and every goddamn word has been vetted and gone over by a team of flacks. So please don’t sit there like a zoo monkey throwing your own feces at me through the bars of your cage, bokay?

Then I go, Look, Randall, you’re how old — about 50? He says he’s 49. I go, Okay, so you were born in 1960, so maybe you don’t remember Meet the Beatles. Or do you? Do you remember that album? Did they have record players out there in Arkansas?

He goes, I’m from Oklahoma, and I’m like, Yeah, same thing, so anyway did you know that album? Were you aware of it? Came out in the beginning of 1964. The one with the four guys in black and white, half their faces white, half in shadow? Just four faces against a black backdrop? He says he’s familiar with the album but he thought we were getting on the phone to talk about incentivizing heavy users in order to optimize the network resources blah blah and I’m like, Dude, if you ever use the word incentivize around me again I swear I will get in my Gulfstream and fly to wherever you are and I will smash you in the face with a rock.

He sighs and says, Okay. I’m like, I’m sorry, what did you say? He says, Okay. I go, I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you. What did you say? He goes, YES! and I go, That’s better. But back to the Beatles. Now, the thing about that album was, on the day it hit the U.S. the whole world changed. Like, before that day, the world was one way, music was one way, culture was one way — and then after that day the world was never the same ever again, and as soon as you heard that album you knew that, and even if you were only nine years old, which I was, you just knew. You knew. Sales were crazy. I mean nuts. The thing was a huge smash hit. By April, twelve weeks after that album came out, the Beatles had the top five spots on the Billboard chart.

Now there was a lot of demand for that record — so much that the plant that printed the records could not keep up. Now here’s the lesson. Do you think the guys who were running Capitol Records said, Gee whiz, the kids are buying up this record at such a crazy pace that our printing plant can’t keep up — we’d better find a way to slow things down. Maybe we can create an incentive that would discourage people from buying the record. Do you think they said that? No, they did not. What they did was, they went out and found another printing plant. And another one and another one, until they could make as many records as people wanted.

Randall is like, Okay, I get your point. I’m like, You know what, I don’t think you do, because if you did, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation, would we? I mean if you did understand how to do things, your guys wouldn’t be standing up at Wall Street conferences and complaining about how much traffic you’re getting. Instead, you would be running around like a fucking maniac trying to build out your fucking network and make it the best network in the world — and the only reason you would ever need to talk to me would be to thank me for creating a phone that’s so amazing that it draws people to your shit network in the first place.

Randall, baby. we’ve got a hit on our hands. We’ve got the smartphone equivalent of Meet the Beatles. It’s not like that album was the first rock album ever. It’s not like nobody ever made a band with some guitars and drums before. But it was radical. It was new. They took old forms and made them new. Same with us. We didn’t invent the smartphone or the PDA or the music player or the Web browser. We just made them better. We made them new. We changed the fucking world, Randall.

And when I say that “we” have a hit on our hands, I’m really giving you way too much credit, because let’s be honest, the success of iPhone has nothing to do with you. In fact, iPhone is a smash hit in spite of your network, not because of it. That’s how good we are here at Apple — we’re so good that even you and your team of Bell System frigtards can’t stop us. You know what it’s like being your business partner? It’s like trying to swim the English Channel with a boat anchor tied to my legs. And yes, in case you’re not following me, in that analogy, you, my friend, are the fucking boat anchor.

So let’s talk traffic. We’ve got people who love this goddamn phone so much that they’re living on it. Yes, that’s crushing your network. Yes, 3% of your users are taking up 40% of your bandwidth. You see this as a bad thing. It’s not. It’s a good thing. It’s a blessing. It’s an indication that people love what we’re doing, which means you now have a reason to go out and double or triple or quadruple your damn network capacity. Jesus! I can’t believe I’m explaining this to you. You’re in the business of selling bandwidth. That pipe is what you sell. Right now what the market is telling you is that you can sell even more! Lots more! Good Lord. The world is changing, and you’re right in the sweet spot.

While I’m ranting, let me ask you something, Randall. At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck Jr. — what the fuck has gone wrong with our country? Used to be, we were innovators. We were leaders. We were builders. We were engineers. We were the best and brightest. We were the kind of guys who, if they were running the biggest mobile network in the U.S., would say it’s not enough to be the biggest, we also want to be the best, and once they got to be the best, they’d say, How can we get even better? What can we do to be the best in the whole fucking world? What can we do that would blow people’s fucking minds? They wouldn’t have sat around wondering about ways to fuck over people who loved their product. But then something happened. Guys like you took over the phone company and all you cared about was milking profit and paying off assholes in Congress to fuck over anyone who came along with a better idea, because even though it might be great for consumers it would mean you and your lazy pals would have to get off your asses and start working again in order to keep up.

And not just you. Look at Big Three automakers. Same deal. Lazy, fat, slow, stupid, from the top to the bottom — everyone focused on just getting what they can in the short run and who cares what kind of piece of shit product we’re putting out. Then somehow along the way the evil motherfuckers on Wall Street got involved and became everyone’s enabler, devoting all their energy and brainpower to breaking things up and parceling them out and selling them off in pieces and then putting them back together again, and it was all about taking all this great shit that our predecessors had built and “unlocking value” which really meant finding ways to leech out whatever bit of money they could get in the short run and let the future be damned. It was all just one big swindle, and the only kind of engineering that matters anymore is financial engineering.

And now here we are. Right here in your own backyard, an American company creates a brilliant phone, and that company hands it to you, and gives you an exclusive deal to carry it — and all you guys can do is complain about how much people want to use it. You, Randall Stephenson, and your lazy stupid company — you are the problem. You are what’s wrong with this country.

I stopped, then. There was nothing on the line. Silence. I said, Randall? He goes, Yeah, I’m here. I said, Does any of that make sense? He says, Yeah, but we’re still not going to do it. See, when you run the numbers what you find is that we’re actually better off running a shitty network than making the investment to build a good one. It’s just numbers, Steve. You can’t charge enough to get a return on the investment.

Now there was silence again. This time I was the one not talking. There was this weird lump in my throat, this tightness in my chest. I had this vision of the future — a ruined empire, run by number crunchers, squalid and stupid and puffed up with phony patriotism, settling for a long slow decline.

[…] leave a comment » While I’m ranting, let me ask you something, Randall. At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck Jr. — what the fuck has gone wrong with our country? Used to be, we were innovators. We were leaders. We were builders. We were engineers. We were the best and brightest. We were the kind of guys who, if they were running the biggest mobile network in the U.S., would say it’s not enough to be the biggest, we also want to be the best, and once they got to be the best, they’d say, How can we get even better? What can we do to be the best in the whole fucking world? What can we do that would blow people’s fucking minds? They wouldn’t have sat around wondering about ways to fuck over people who loved their product. But then something happened. Guys like you took over the phone company and all you cared about was milking profit and paying off assholes in Congress to fuck over anyone who came along with a better idea, because even though it might be great for consumers it would mean you and your lazy pals would have to get off your asses and start working again in order to keep up. via fakesteve.net […]

[…] great satire echoes truth. By that measure, Fake Steve Job’s Not-So-Brief Chat With AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson could be the best satire of this decade. And now here we are. Right here in your own backyard, an […]

[…] – how stupid can social media be – well there’s now an app for that – Shooting at Bubbles A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T – Fake Steve Jobs It’s Raining FAIL. Widespread AT&T Outages Reported In San Francisco. – […]

[…] I am pretty sure FSJ is better than the real thing. Posted on December 12, 2009, 10:44 am, by Garrick, under Posts. Randall is like, Okay, I get your point. I’m like, You know what, I don’t think you do, because if you did, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation, would we? I mean if you did understand how to do things, your guys wouldn’t be standing up at Wall Street conferences and complaining about how much traffic you’re getting. Instead, you would be running around like a fucking maniac trying to build out your fucking network and make it the best network in the world — and the only reason you would ever need to talk to me would be to thank me for creating a phone that’s so amazing that it draws people to your shit network in the first place. via fakesteve.net […]

[…] what has to be one of the best Fake Steve Jobs posts Dan Lyons pretty well rips AT&T a new one as being a slime bucket of the telecommunications world by suggesting that iPhone users should cut […]

[…] goes Ayn Rand on AT&T CEO, Randall Stephenson, with Randall playing the role of James Taggart. The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T Hysterical, and yet at the same time so sadly true. . __________________ . . ♦ […]

[…] what has to be one of the best Fake Steve Jobs posts Dan Lyons pretty well rips AT&T a new one as being a slime bucket of the telecommunications world by suggesting that iPhone users should cut […]

[…] here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Powered by WP Greet BoxFake Steve gives it to AT&T → For all those of you frustrated about your favourite network’s forward thinking strategies […]

[…] and an equally fake AT&T CEO, Randall Stephenson” was too good not to share (the entire original post is worth a chuckle or two): And now here we are. Right here in your own backyard, an American […]

[…] simply to reproduce other blogger’s pieces; but a deserved exception is hereby made for this exceptional post from Fake Steve Jobs, on the subject of ATT’s recent lament that iPhone users are using their […]

[…] The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T So let’s talk traffic. We’ve got people who love this goddamn phone so much that they’re living on it. Yes, that’s crushing your network. Yes, 3% of your users are taking up 40% of your bandwidth. You see this as a bad thing. It’s not. It’s a good thing. It’s a blessing. It’s an indication that people love what we’re doing, which means you now have a reason to go out and double or triple or quadruple your damn network capacity. Jesus! I can’t believe I’m explaining this to you. You’re in the business of selling bandwidth. That pipe is what you sell. Right now what the market is telling you is that you can sell even more! Lots more! Good Lord. The world is changing, and you’re right in the sweet spot. (tags: apple AT&T FSJ humor sarcasm) […]

[…] Fake Steve Gives It to at&T Posted on December 14th, 2009 by admin in General, mac news & tips Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Powered by WP Greet BoxFake Steve gives it to AT&T → […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

[…] As are many AT&T users, Fake Steve is pissed. It might be that Time’s Magazine is hesitating on making him the Person of the Year 2009 over AT&T’s poor coverage. Or maybe he just didn’t appreciate AT&T’s CEO calling iPhone users hogs. Nevertheless, he’s pissed. […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

[…] I urge everyone to Go Read Garth. And then you will understand that Economics is The Science of Supporting the Status Quo and Stifling Innovation, as Steve Jobs (h/t Patrick) noted several days ago. […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

[…] December 15, 2009 by admin I urge everyone to Go Read Garth. And then you will understand that Economics is The Science of Supporting the Status Quo and Stifling Innovation, as Steve Jobs (h/t Patrick) noted several days ago. […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

[…] A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T – This story was the subject of many, many discussions last week. It is an absolute must-read for an opinionated and blunt analysis of how and why AT&T sucks, the iPhone is great and America is on the decline. I’d post a snip, but that might prevent some from reading the whole thing. Please. […]

[…] announcement that the carrier would be pursuing tiered pricing for data plans, Fake Steve Jobs took AT&T to task. Ah, but he didn’t stop there. Fake Steve has a plan to bring AT&T to its knees on […]

[…] Well, preliminary results from David P Reed indicate that nope, it’s really AT&T’s problem. They are reporting initial results that AT&T also sucks on all the other 3-G interaction devices they used. This would imply that it’s not the iPhone, and is instead a situation more like the one luridly described by Fake Steve Jobs. […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

[…] to use their services less. As usual, Fake Steve Jobs gets right to the heart of the matter with this imaginary conversation with an imaginary AT&T executive: Fake Steve: “Yes, 3% of your users are taking up 40% […]

[…] From Fake Steve Jobs. My favorite part is: …what the fuck has gone wrong with our country? Used to be, we were innovators. We were leaders. We were builders. We were engineers. We were the best and brightest. We were the kind of guys who, if they were running the biggest mobile network in the U.S., would say it’s not enough to be the biggest, we also want to be the best, and once they got to be the best, they’d say, How can we get even better? What can we do to be the best in the whole fucking world? What can we do that would blow people’s fucking minds? They wouldn’t have sat around wondering about ways to fuck over people who loved their product. But then something happened. Guys like you took over the phone company and all you cared about was milking profit and paying off assholes in Congress to fuck over anyone who came along with a better idea, because even though it might be great for consumers it would mean you and your lazy pals would have to get off your asses and start working again in order to keep up. […]

[…] once again moving us away from openness and interoperability. Nobody said this better than Fake Steve Jobs. I got really mad and cancelled my iPhone contract (and my AT&T landline), sold the 3G on […]

[…] Last words, I vowed there will be no more AT&T for me, a company that doesn’t even know what “Customer Satisfaction” is, only talk big mouths about their 3G network on TV, sued the other company for using offensive words to their lame network (which is actually true, AT&T in the end admitted it), and can only think about sucking money out of the customers. [Proof] […]

[…] But now? Now you’ll be tempted to go look at your usage before streaming that movie. Now there will be a psychological barrier, however small, that makes you think twice about using your phone. More friction in the user experience. What Apple understands is that this friction, no matter how small, is an impediment to using the device, and they seek to eliminate as much of it as possible. AT&T either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care. […]

[…] Originally Posted by sppunk I tether, but on my BB I domt go over 2 gb. But iphone html5 and streaming apps would kill that most likely. I've been unhappy with ATT's network – I think it has gotten worse in the past 4 months. Too bad iPhones don't work with Verizon (even unlocked apparently since they don't support CDMA). The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T […]

[…] But here’s where it may get REALLY interesting. Apple was already dealing with a growing negative publicity problem with AT&T over that carrier’s problems supporting the millions of iPhone users. It seems the iPhone faithful are using their iPhones so much that they are overloading the AT&T network even more that those effective “Our red map is way bigger than your blue map” commercials from competitor Verizon Wireless. The AT&T reliability issue led to a scathing post from commentator “Fake Steve Jobs” on his blog, that has resoundingly resonated with frustrated iPhone/AT&T customers all across America. (Read the post, which I caution you is loaded with rather “salty” language, by clicking right here.) […]

[…] A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T by Fake Steve Jobs“Point of the talk was, when you’re lucky enough to create a smash hit product — when the stars align, and the hardware is great and the ecosystem is great and the apps are great and the whole experience is great, and everything you do just makes everything else better, and you’re totally on a roll and can do no wrong — when that happens, you do not go out and try to fuck it all up by discouraging people who love your product. What you do, instead, is you fix your fucking shitty ass network you fucking shit-eating-grin-wearing hillbilly ass clown!” […]

[…] sided with AT&T, but others thought that was bogus. Now Fake Steve Jobs is getting in on the action. Fake Steve is telling iPhone users to go crazy with their data usage this Friday, December 18, to […]

Yes, the incidence of those terms is low, but Apple has its own dialect of corporate-speak, as I imagine most large or old companies do. I never heard any Facebook-style dialect that consists of stuff like “you’ll be doing really impactful work” or …

[…] wind at times, and the biggest complaint I hear from iPhone users is the spotty data coverage. Even Steve Jobs gripes about it. If I’m going to take the plunge, sell out, and buy into the tech hype, I’d better […]

[…] Fake Steve Jobs tries to call the AT&T CEO We’re doing this project on “customer service” and I’m amazed at the massive cultural presence of the customer service interaction. It’s something we can easily joke about, because we’re all familiar with it. The bad service call is part of the fabric of our society. Comments Off | Email This Post « How glitz (so easily) becomes failure Chocolate and real estate » […]

[…] have many things to say about the iPhone at a wireless industry conference earlier this week. In a talk that resembled this Fake Steve Jobs satire, the New York Times reports that Stephenson was upset that high-volume smartphone users were […]

[…] say about the iPhone at a wireless industry conference earlier this week (full video below). In a talk that resembled this Fake Steve Jobs satire, the New York Times reports that Stephenson was upset that high-volume smartphone users were […]

[…] say about the iPhone at a wireless industry conference earlier this week (full video below). In a talk that resembled this Fake Steve Jobs satire, the New York Times reports that Stephenson was upset that high-volume smartphone users were […]

[…] The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T – By April, twelve weeks after that album came out, the Beatles had the top five spots on the Billboard chart.Now there was a lot of demand for that record — so much that the plant that printed the records could not keep up. Now here’s the lesson. Do you think the guys who were running Capitol Records said, Gee whiz, the kids are buying up this record at such a crazy pace that our printing plant can’t keep up — we’d better find a way to slow things down. Maybe we can create an incentive that would discourage people from buying the record. Do you think they said that? No, they did not. What they did was, they went out and found another printing plant. And another one and another one, until they could make as many records as people wanted. … Randall, baby. we’ve got a hit on our hands. We’ve got the smartphone equivalent of Meet the Beatles. […]

[…] Da, ştiu, avem drumuri care trec prin munţi, semnalul călătoreşte greu, dar totuşi, vorbim aici de drumuri naţionale, tranzitate zilnic de mii de călători, unii dintre ei ar vrea să aibă internet tot drumul. Sau operatorii noştri fac ca AT&T? Yeah, but we’re still not going to do it. See, when you run the numbers what you find is that we’re actually better off running a shitty network than making the investment to build a good one. It’s just numbers, Steve. You can’t charge enough to get a return on the investment. (sursa) […]